To avoid a similar cheating scandal that rocked Bihar last year, the UP Board will twice scrutinize answer sheets of all intermediate and high school students scoring 90% and above.

In a first, Class 10 and 12 toppers in Uttar Pradesh Madhyamik Shiksha Parishad (or UP Board) examinations will undergo a double scrutiny before the declaration of results.

Taking a lesson from the Bihar Board’s embarrassment in 2016 after a topper’s faux pas in a television interview blew the lid off a gigantic copying racket, the UP Board has decided to ensure that answer sheets of all intermediate and high school students scoring 90% and above in the written exams will be re-examined at the evaluation centre by a senior examiner.

As a result, answer sheets of any high school student who scores 63 marks or above out of a maximum of 70 marks will have his or her answer copies rechecked by the evaluation centre’s deputy chief examiner, who besides ensuring proper evaluation will also put his own comments on the copies before the marks are accepted as final. The same process will be undertaken for Class 12 students scoring 90% or above in any paper.

Confirming the double evaluation of toppers, secretary of UP Board Shail Yadav said, “The decision to get the answer sheets of students rechecked has been taken to ensure fair and error- free evaluation that does justice to an individual student’s performance and also prevent possibility of any error on the part of the examiner.” Instructions in this regard were sent to evaluation centres, Yadav added.

The mandatory provision for re-evaluation of answer sheets of the students scoring 90% and above has duly been included in the instructions regarding an evaluation of the board exam answer sheets prepared by the UP Board officials. These are now being sent to the designated evaluation centres across the state.

Sources say the steps have been taken to counter possible external influence on examiners by either the copying mafia or even some schools desperate to illegally improve their showing in the board exams with an aim to attract more admissions to their institutions.

The Board will be deputing around 1.5 lakh teachers as examiners at around 250 evaluation centres in the state for evaluating answer sheets of around 58 lakh students appearing in the exams, which began on March 16 and will end on April 21.